Andrew Wallenstein Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Caroline Brew editor In a panel titled “Embrace the Power of Fandom to Connect Content and Commerce,” Alexys Coronel, head of U.S. entertainment and telecommunications at Amazon Ads, sat down with Andrew Wallenstein, Variety Intelligence Platform president and chief media analyst, to discuss how brands can connect with fans — and how that relates to Prime Video’s transition to an ad-supported service. “Once you capture a fan’s interest, they now look to you continue to drive that connection,” Coronel explained to the crowd.

Lexi Carson At Variety’s 2024 Entertainment Marketing Summit, Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst of Variety Intelligence Platform, sat down with Jana Arbanas, vice chair and Deloitte‘s US Telecom, Media, and Entertainment sector leader, to discuss the background and themes of Deloitte’s annual digital media trends. This year was Deloitte’s 18th year of the Gen Z and Millennial survey. The survey analyzes over 3,500 consumers from ages 14 and up and is then sent back to the United States Census Bureau to obtain a real representative look at consumer behavior.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst Horror continues to perform well at theaters. But as this new Variety VIP+ analysis of the track record scary movies have put together in 2024, no genre is immune to the ups and downs of the marketplace.

Variety, about her vision for campaign strategy, having led marketing efforts on such films as “Air,” “Saltburn” and the Academy Award-winning film “American Fiction.” She has also spearheaded marketing for hit series including “Expats,” “Mr. & Mrs.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Just when last week’s ratings resurgence for the Golden Globes had us all feeling good, along comes the Emmy Awards — rescheduled from its usual September slot because of Hollywood strikes — to deliver an all-time audience low to shake our confidence in awards show all over again. Fox’s Monday, Jan.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Attending the Consumer Electronics Show is an eye-opening experience that offers intriguing glimpses into the future and an overwhelming amount of information about how the media, entertainment and tech industries are evolving in the present day. For the past decade, Variety has partnered with the Consumer Technology Association to help Hollywood players navigate a fast-changing marketplace with an entertainment business-focused track of programming at the big show.

Diego Ramos Bechara editor When asked to summarize his thoughts on streaming in 2024 with just one word, Joe Cady—executive vice president of advanced advertising & partnerships at NBCUniversal—used “democratization.” “The application of data for targeting and measurement, together with automation, lets us make our premium content available to so many more marketers than we could otherwise work with,” he said. “As we go forward into 2024 and beyond, that will be so much more of an opportunity to expand the scope of marketers who can participate in premium TV.” Cady was joined by Rebecca Panico, vice president and global head of media at Hilton and Jed Dederick, chief client officer at The Trade Desk, at a panel moderated by Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst at Variety Intelligence Platform, as a part of Variety’s CES Entertainment Summit held on January 10 in Las Vegas.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst Perhaps no consumer-electronics product had a more audacious launch in 2023 than Telly, a TV set that was given out for free to thousands of U.S. consumers.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst Jewish streaming service ChaiFlicks has greenlit its first original series, a half-hour unscripted showcase for kosher-food cuisine around the U.S. Premiering Nov. 16, “Schmoozing and Cruising” touches down everywhere from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for a mouthful of BBQ, pizza and donuts across six tasty episodes.

McKinley Franklin editor Leaders from Mattel, YouTube, Universal Pictures, Google, Amazon and more gathered at Variety’s Entertainment and Technology summit, presented by City National Bank, to breakdown the future of marketing in the entertainment space. Panels included conversations with the leading experts on artificial intelligence, fan-focused growth on social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok and the massive future of online gaming. Here are a few of the key takeaways from a day of lively discourse.

Sophia Scorziello editor In an industry on track to drive around $400 billion in revenue this year, it might seem fine for gaming companies to let go of the reins every now and then when hit games take off. But Javier Ferreira, co-CEO of Scopely (a mobile-first video game developer) argues that it’s very much a business of planning. He says, “We think of games as forever businesses.” Ferreira shared his thoughts on best practices for engaging with today’s gaming communities and the best IPs to invest at the “Big Business of Games with Scopely” panel during Variety’s Entertainment & Technology Summit Thursday.

Whitney Cinkala Variety returns with its annual Entertainment and Technology Summit, presented by City National Bank, on Sept. 21 in Los Angeles and streaming virtually. Recently added speakers include Ynon Kreiz, chairman and CEO of Mattel; and Charles D.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst In the second of a two-part interview on Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast, Soul Machines CEO Greg Cross casts his eye toward the future of how his business marrying state-of-the-art animation with artificial intelligence will be utilized in the world of Hollywood celebrity. Cross delves into the challenge of building technology ideally situated for the metaverse, which hasn’t materialized quite as quickly as advocates for that three-dimensional environment had envisioned.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter A new daily newsletter launched Monday as part of an expansion of Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+), a digital-subscription tier of the Variety website dedicated to thought leadership about the media business. The new offering, dubbed VIP+ Vitals, represents a lower-cost option for accessing a portion of the existing VIP+ product, now known as VIP+ Premium. Every weekday morning, subscribers to VIP+ Vitals will receive a newsletter in their inboxes with actionable insights and data for media industry professionals. Each day’s edition will focus on a different theme that recurs every week:

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst At a time when the creative community is aligned on the picket lines in their disenchantment with the entertainment industry, there’s an innovative new outfit blazing a new path to creating and distributing content. Led by veterans of Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks, Toonstar bills itself as a “Web3 story studio” capable of developing, producing and financing animated projects powered by the blockchain. CEO and co-founder John Attanansio sees an opening for attracting talent looking for new ways to reach an audience. Listen to the podcast here: “There are trends in Hollywood right now that, honestly, I think make it easier,” he said on the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business.” “You can see especially what’s happening now: There are a lot of productions that are getting canceled or halted, things will sit in development for extended periods of time. It’s just getting harder and harder to get something made in the traditional system.”

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst The Magnolia Network series “Restored” just returned for a seventh season with host Brett Waterman, who isn’t doing just another cable-TV house-flipping show; this series is a serious look at the historic preservation of houses from a wide range of architectural styles. With his keen eye, Waterman is able to coax homes back into shape, reinventing previously poorly remodeled areas or reimagining original spaces, all the while giving the viewers the historical background to support the accuracy of the updates. Listen to the podcast here: “A place that’s been there for at least 30 or 40 years has an overall impact on the greater community, and it’s architecturally supported by other structures and memories for many people that are already there,” said Waterman on the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business.”

EJ Panaligan editor Top gaming business leaders converged to talk about the exciting state of the industry at the Variety Gaming & Entertainment Breakfast Presented by Pixel United on Oct. 4 at the Palm in Beverly Hills. Across keynote conversations and panels with representatives from Riot Games, Pixel United, Meta and other companies, executives dished on the immense film and television crossover potential of gaming intellectual properties for mediums like television and film, the financial dominance of the mobile gaming industry and future metaverse opportunities for video games. Read on below for the key takeaways from each of the breakfast’s three conversations.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst If anyone has a sense of what Vince McMahon means to the WWE league he founded, it’s Brian Gewirtz. Currently SVP of development at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-led prodco Seven Bucks Prods., Gewirtz spent 15 years working as a writer with McMahon to script the drama in and out of the ring at the wrestling empire. It’s a wild experience he recounts in his new memoir, “There’s Just One Problem: True Tales from the Former One-Time 7th Most Powerful Person in WWE.” Now that McMahon has retired in the wake of a scandal that could impact the future of WWE, Gewirtz believes his former company is in good hands under the triumvirate of its current overseers, co-CEOs Nick Khan and Vince’s daughter, Stephanie McMahon, as well as her husband, chief creative officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque.

Variety’s Entertainment Gaming Leaders report is an up-to-the-minute look at the key figures driving this dynamic intersection, where nothing less than a visual media revolution is taking place. Variety teams with Pixel United for first-ever Leaders in Gaming & Entertainment Breakfast Oct.

William Earl Variety and Pixel United will host the first-ever Leaders in Gaming & Entertainment Breakfast on Oct. 4. The in-person breakfast, held in Los Angeles, will bring together some of the biggest names in the gaming industry. Marc Merrill, co-founder and president of games for Riot Games, and Shauna Spenley, president of Riot Games Entertainment, will participate in a keynote conversation, moderated by Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst of Variety Intelligence Platform, about the successful screen crossovers of Riot’s video games, such as their Emmy-winning animated series “Arcane: League of Legends.” Michael Lang, CEO of Pixel United, will be in conversation with Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Cynthia Littleton about his vision for the mobile games industry, identifying opportunities for the wider entertainment industry to align with the passionate gaming community.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst The signs are everywhere that the film industry is struggling, from the current dry spell at the box office to exhibition giant Cineworld filing for bankruptcy earlier this month. But the movie business is actually more profitable than it’s ever been, according to the CEO and founder of Blumhouse Productions. Jason Blum and his company’s new president, Abhijay Prakash, were positively bullish about the state of cinema in a joint keynote appearance last week at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology Summit Presented by City National Bank. While acknowledging that it’s highly unlikely that the box office will return to it its pre-pandemic peaks, they testified that the rise of streaming has only helped monetize movies more effectively in later release windows.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst As the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, Jeanie Buss is well known in the world of professional basketball. Now she’s making a name for herself in Hollywood as well.  As if she didn’t have enough on her plate overseeing one of the most storied franchises in all of sports, she is plenty busy as well guiding multiple productions, including a new Hulu documentary on which she serves as executive producer, “Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers,” which premiered last month. In addition, she is about to relaunch beginning Sept. 17 the WOW: Women of Wrestling league — that she owned since 2011 as a syndicated property — both in the U.S. and abroad in partnership with Paramount. She’s also teamed up with Mindy Kaling on a scripted comedy in development at Netflix that offers a thinly veiled fictional version of her life as a team owner. 

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystThe upstart sports brand Overtime announced a Series D round of funding to the tune of $100 million, with Liberty Media Corp. joining its long roster of investors.In an interview for the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” Dan Porter, CEO and founder of Overtime, pledged to grow the company’s existing leagues in basketball and football.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystWhen “Downton Abbey: The New Era” arrives in U.S. theaters this week, it will represent just the latest iteration of a franchise more than a decade in operation.Julian Fellowes, the Emmy-winning writer of the period-drama megahit, and Gareth Neame, executive chairman of Carnival Films, discuss their collaboration on six TV seasons and two films on the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” including their hopes that there is still more to come for their beloved period drama.“We can go on with these people as long as the audience wants to go on seeing them and as long as they enjoy them,” said Neame of the “Downton” characters.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystIn the pandemic-impacted movie marketplace, it might seem like the only films that succeed in theaters these days are blockbuster titles featuring superheroes. But that’s not the case, according to William Sherak, one of the principals at Project X Entertainment.The company already proved the staying power of mid-budget movies with the success of Paramount Pictures’ “Scream,”  the horror franchise that returned to form at the box office in January.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystIf there’s two things Harry Sloan knows, it’s special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) and the media business.Sloan has co-founded a record seven SPACs as the co-founder of Eagle Equity Partners, including the most successful such venture to date: sports-betting hub DraftKings, where he also serves as vice chairman.

“50 Cent” Jackson doesn’t think he can be canceled.The rapper and television producer, whose newest project, “Power Book II: Ghost” premieres on Starz Sept. 6, said during Variety‘s Entertainment Marketing Summit presented by Deloitte that he doesn’t care whether people love him or hate him — as long as they care.“I’m an entertainer, so to entertain is, I believe, to provoke emotion,” Jackson, 45, told Variety‘s Andrew Wallenstein.

Ellise Shafer editorCurtis “50 Cent” Jackson doesn’t think he can be canceled.The rapper and television producer, whose newest project, “Power Book II: Ghost” premieres on Starz Sept. 6, said during Variety‘s Entertainment Marketing Summit presented by Deloitte that he doesn’t care whether people love him or hate him – as long as they care.“I’m an entertainer, so to entertain is, I believe, to provoke emotion,” Jackson told Variety‘s Andrew Wallenstein.

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